Development of technologies of cutting and decontamination employing high power fiber laser

Toyama, Shinichi  ; Minehara, Eisuke*

Development of the steel cutting technology which employs high power fiber laser for the industrial applicability of the laser technology has been carried out at The Wakasa Wan Energy Research Center (WERC). At present, the laser technologies for dismantling and decontamination are concurrently being developed to the application measure of nuclear dismantling for domestic nuclear power plants in the future. Dismantling of nuclear facilities is now under the development in the world. The necessity of the technology is increasing and the development is strongly expected. Beside the relative easiness to handle compared with other laser system, suppression of production of secondary radioactive waste and dose exposure can be realized by the dramatic improvement by excelled thermal density of fiber laser. This paper provides recent results from cutting technology for thick steels aiming disassembling nuclear pressure vessel, and decontamination machine technology which works under high radiation dose, explaining the results from cutting experiment of steels and the actual equipment and from the radiation resistance experiment for component devices.